


Black to blue

by Charona



Series: Thunder and lightning [2]
Category: Formula 1 RPF, Motorsport RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Arguments, Fights, Language, Loneliness, Longing, M/M, SO MUCH SADNESS, Self-Hatred, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 18:59:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18900679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charona/pseuds/Charona
Summary: Sequel to “Thunder and lightning”The pain of losing,no, of having lostDaniel, is beyond bearable.The worst part is that Daniel still smiles. The smiles are still breath taking and ground shaking and beautiful – they’re just not aimed at Max anymore.a.k.a. “Isn’t it funny, how racing and caring contain the exact same letters and still manage to be complete opposites of one another?”





	Black to blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [extremesoft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extremesoft/gifts).



> Hello folks!
> 
> Here is the sequel of "thunder and lightning" you guys wanted to have/read so badly :D  
> I highly recommend reading the story before reading this OS:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/18511399/chapters/43869817  
> I hope you like it and are content with this kind of "ending"^^ 
> 
> This goes _again_ to the wonderful extremesoft, who's been such a brilliant friend and muse and cheer-up since the moment I commented on her story "impact" for the first time but also lit the fuse to this story by mentioning Max’s blackened heart. You are #blessed, saukko! Thank you so much, my friend, you’re a legend!
> 
> Have fun, guys ;)

Max falls.  
He dreams about falling through solid grounds and safety nets and keeps falling when he opens his eyes and the bright spring sun burns holes into the darkness behind his eyelids.  
He falls into an empty abyss that contains nothing but races and practices and hours in the simulator and interviews and repeating _yeah, everything’s fine_ and _I’m so excited about the new season_ in a constant never-ending loop.  
Nothing is fine and he couldn’t care less about the new season with Mercedes nipping every hint of competition in the bud.  
The races and interviews and useless words lose their meaning as soon as the door to his driver’s room falls shut behind him and the noises of the ever-milling team and the howling of engines are drowned out.  
Then Max sits in silence and nightly-black darkness on the uncomfortable couch and cries equally silent tears of bitter regret and loss and pain. The latter is the worst, actually, especially because Max always thought he was used to pain. Not the pain of burning your fingers on the stove or the sting of cutting your cheek while shaving. Not the pain of crashing your car and being left bruised for days or the itching ache of a bone mending and coalescing that keeps you awake at night.  
The pain of underachievement, of being nothing special, replaceable is something Max grew up with and strangely fond of in the process – it fuels his determination and persistence.  
But this pain, oh, this one is something entirely else. The pain of losing, _no, of having lost_ Daniel, is beyond bearable. Some nights Max wakes up drenched in sweat and tears alike, nausea making him dizzy and bile rising in his throat, images of his dream of falling and Daniel and falling from Daniel imprinted to the inside of his eyelids. He gets up and stumbles to the bathroom, crouching in front of the toilet seat and vomiting his innards and his soul and Daniel out of his system until there is absolutely nothing left in him except the sickening taste of bile and the blackness of his heart.  
Max truly believes his heart is made of black ice by now.  
He tries his best to welcome Pierre to the team, to make the Frenchman feel at home, but despite them talking and joking a lot in French and the language coming more natural to Max he’d trade every single French word for a single one of Daniel’s smiles.  
The worst part is, he states internally tilting his head back against the cold white bathroom tiles, that Daniel still smiles. The smiles are still breath taking and ground shaking and beautiful – they’re just not aimed at Max anymore. 

 

Sometimes Max fucks out his sorrow. Even to himself he feels like a damn parrot reciting the same phone number or the same catchy tune over and over again. It’s always the same procedure: He visits one of the posh and elegant night clubs Monaco provides plenty of, already intoxicated with strong liquor and throbbing techno music. He picks up a woman with the ever same pick-up line he’d scream over the ever same deafening bass and takes her to his apartment. It’s always the same type of woman, tall, skinny to almost bony, tattoos, dark eyes, dark curls and gone straight after Max is done using her.  
It’s always dirty and graceless and humiliating and Max willingly hurts the bodies that aren’t at all like the one he imagines underneath him in the soft sheets. He pounds into too soft flesh, too high pitched screams and moans pierce his ears, they are all the wrong tattoos and curls.  
There is a tad of mid-orgasmic satisfaction (he’s just a man after all), but it vanishes with his body going completely limp and uninvited images of totally different curls and eyes and tattoos flash across his inner eye.  
And every night he comes inside another exchangeable woman the realization strikes him like a full blown atomic assault. Every time he sits naked on the floor of his bedroom, thoroughly avoiding the wet and disgusting sheets, his chest heaving under a shimmering film of sweat and the thud of the apartment door falling shut resounding in his ears, he realizes he’s simply not able to fuck _Daniel_ out of his system. 

 

Sometimes Max drowns out his sorrow, literally drowns it in alcohol so strong it’s burning spirit and fuel in his throat. He drinks alone in his hotel rooms wherever on the globe they might be, and sits in darkness and drinks until he vomits his innards and his soul and Daniel out of system again, the latter always coming back to him, no matter the hangover and sore throat the next morning, when black fades into blue.  
It gets bad enough for people to notice, for fans to comment on photos on his Instagram. Pierre looks at him consolably, Helmut gives unwanted advice and his father… well, his _father_ is another story, entirely. Max hasn’t seen him in weeks actually and whenever their paths cross in the paddock they don’t really talk to one another. Max isn’t sure, if his dad even cares. 

Whenever Max crosses paths with Daniel on the other hand it’s like a clash, a punch to his gut, a whirlwind of images, sensations, feelings, everything at once, until Max’s head spins and he feels like fainting from everything he wants to say and know and do. But he fucked up. Big time. There is no one else to blame but he himself and he himself _only_.  
The way Daniel looks at him from his stronghold of aloofness, guarded behind the black shields of his sunglasses and bearing his most disarming smile makes Max want to scream from the top of his lungs. Everything about Daniel is a perfectly rehearsed play, a show of _distance_ and _callousness_ and _politeness_. Max despises it with all his heart and watches with a clenched jaw how Daniel is deep in conversation with Pierre on the wagon. 

It gets too much for Max in Spain, in that second Daniel scurries past him after the race, his eyes not hiding behind sunglasses but his visor and his grin invisible (or non-existent) under his helmet.  
He knows in that second how badly he fucked up everything there was to fuck up. All his nightmares about falling, about not being able to hold onto Daniel’s hand and Daniel sinking into the stormy Pacific Ocean make sense all of a sudden.  
He has to talk to the German press first, but then he’ll find Daniel. Whether to punch that _distance_ and _callousness_ and _politeness_ out of him or kiss _life_ and _hope_ and _love_ back into him – he hasn’t decided yet.  
His fingers twitch while stating the same nonsense about the race to the reporter as always, _yes, it was an exciting and tiring race_ (No it wasn’t), _he’s looking forward to Monaco and whether they’ll be able to compete with the Silver Arrows this season_ (He does neither, really) and _he’s proud of the team and their achievement and the podium today_ (That one is actually true). 

A soon as his mother’s upbringing allows him to, he hurries past Hamilton and Bottas to the garages.  
The chaos is less chaotic as one could expect. Every team member knows their job and like ants they carry equipment, spare parts and implements to the huge trucks outside. Wrap it all up, just to unpack it next week somewhere entirely else. Circle of life and all that bullshit.  
Max tries to be as little in their way as possible and enters the Renault garage without hindrance.  
He’s a dark blue drop sinking into a tub filled with liquid sunlight, the bright yellow dazzling him for a split second.  
He makes his way to the driver’s rooms, sees “Daniel Ricciardo” written in incongruously broad letters onto the opal-glass door, before a voice calls him off.  
“No, Verstappen. Not you.” Michael Italiano plants himself in front of Max with a threatening aura of coldness wavering around him and a determined expression on his tanned face. Max swallows the taste of bile.  
“Michael. I just wanted to-“  
“I don’t give a fuck about what you want. Leave him alone.”  
“Mate, I just want to talk to Daniel.” Michael’s gaze from green-brown eyes swiftly moves from the champagne drenched cap to Max’s chest and back up again. His eyes darken and he radiates an eerie determination in his suppressed aversion.  
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough, already, _mate_?” he snaps like the guard dog, he actually is. “I’ll say it one more time before I’m calling security. Turn around and leave, Max.”  
And Max Verstappen, the proud Dutch lion, known to invariably obey his own rules (and his own laws of gravity and pace as it seems sometimes) and them alone, turns around and leaves in defeat biting back every curse or tear that might escape him. 

 

It’s Monaco then.  
Of course it is the sun-drenched, sparkling and posh port city, Max calls his home (not _home_ , but it’s a place he eats, sleeps and showers at).  
The race is as dull and mediocre as the last ones and Max couldn’t care less about it. He gathers the information he needs afterwards and walks the short distance to the hotel most of the teams accommodate their drivers in. He passes the street his apartment is located in and sighs.  
He crosses the lobby unhindered and moments later he stands in front of the dark wooden door in the dimly lit corridor.  
Max contemplates turning around and leaving, returning to the spiral of self-destruction and oblivion and sleeplessness and hatred; but he knows he’s gambling with his life and happiness and sanity every weekend and what he’s doing is too damn dangerous. He remembers Lauda’s words: there’s a twenty percent chance of losing your life every time you get into a race car – not more, not less, twenty percent. Max is definitely beyond those and it has nothing to do with the way safer cars nowadays.  
So he knocks, the noise like gunfire in his ears.  
“Une seconde.”  
Max closes his eyes at the sound of Daniel’s voice, distorted and tired and sounding slightly off in French, but its color is still so familiar and warm like rays of sunshine after a cool spring rain shower.  
Max braces himself for what might follow Daniel’s steps and what (and who) he’s going to encounter – a punch in the face, a yell, a smile. The latter obviously the at least likely possibility.  
When Daniel opens the door and sees Max standing in front of him, reduced to a pile of misery and tiredness, his jaw clenches.  
It’s a moment of complete silence, they size each other up and down and scan their eyes, intentions, guards. Two lonely wolves meeting in equally strange territory, radiating a mixture of will to fight and flee.  
Daniel is the first one to break the silence, his voice bitter cold like shrapnel of glass and ice.  
“Name me one good reason why I shouldn’t shut the door in your face.”  
Max stares into his dark eyes and searches for the warmth he used to bask in and can’t find it.  
“To be honest I don’t have one.” He then says, staring at his feet, presenting his bare neck to Daniel to bury his teeth into, but Daniel huffs and to Max’s biggest surprise he takes a step back and gestures Max to come inside.  
“I’ve always been horrible at denying you anything.”  
Max smiles and his muscles ache at the by now unfamiliar movement.  
“Thank you.”

 

They sit on the comfortable and lavishly arranged sofa and heavy silence hangs between them.  
Max rummages through his brain to find something so say, anything, but all he can do is stare daggers into the carpeted floor and avoid Daniel at all cost – Daniel, who sits next to Max with an arm’s length between them and it stings Max even more than the silence.  
They’ve spent a lot of time together without a word being spoken, when they were too depressed after races or simply too tired to talk, fed up with human interaction. They’ve spent a lot of time together without touching, when they were both tired of being stripped into their seats, the pats on the backs, fed up with actual physical contact. But they’ve always been close to each other, no matter what. Filling the room with their breaths, occasionally sighs or sniffles while being on their phones or reading or simply staring into the dimness of the suite.  
Now Max feels like he’s being slain by silence, that isn’t _theirs_ , but Daniel’s and Daniel’s only. He feels the anger boiling up in him, the frustration about being rendered to a pile of nothingness compared to Daniel, almost helpless like pray trapped in the onyx-black eyes of his former team mate. _Fuck_. 

“Congratulations to your trophy.” 

Max has expected a lot, but of course Daniel manages to surprise him as always.  
“Thanks.” He says before he can think about it twice.  
“Your season’s pretty good so far. You’ve had some good races, clean overtakes and well planned strategies and all that.” Max finally takes all his courage together and averts his eyes from the floor, looking into Daniel’s face instead and meeting _distance_ and _politeness_. He displays that smile every camera on every race track around the globe knows. The distanced and polite smile when things are going well enough to be content but not well enough to be happy about them. Max feels a bitter taste blooming on his tongue and realizes he bit his cheek hard enough it started to bleed.  
“Yeah, I guess so.”  
“How’s working with Pierre?”  
And in that second Max realizes it is Daniel’s attempt on having small talk that infuriates Max beyond imagination. With a level of energy he didn’t know he had, he jumps up and ruffles his hair. If Daniel falters and looks irritated Max is too occupied by his rapid heartbeat and racing thoughts. 

“This is… you are… honestly!” He ruffles his hair again, wipes over his mouth and sorts out his mind before licking his lips and lifting his hands in a soothing gesture that forms a harsh contrast to the sour anger and frustration lingering in his next words.  
„Don’t talk to me like we’re some random people at a class reunion. Jesus Christ, we’re far from that and you are just so infuriating right now!”  
He points a finger at Daniel, who stays put on the couch and Max can’t tell (and he doesn’t really care to be honest) whether it’s out of pure surprise or indifference. All he knows is, he needs to vent his thoughts and feelings before they eat him alive.  
“I know, I have no right to be angry with you. You look happy or at least you’re pretty good at pretending to be happy and I have no right to interfere here. No right, whatsoever but I can’t help it. You are like this, so immensely chill and polite and it drives me insane.” Part of his strength leaves Max at that confession, his shoulders drop and he sighs. He feels the lump in his throat and fights it back down where it came from, together with the goddamn tears that dwell in his eyes. He realizes that this isn’t the way he wants this conversation to go, not at all. That isn’t what Daniel deserves, for Daniel deserves the world and Max drove him away. He wipes his cheeks and shakes his head rapidly blinking away tears. His eyes move swiftly over Daniel, black curls, tanned skin, a mask of patience and callousness covering his face. _Fuck it, he’s got to know_.  
“The thought of you leaving kills me, it clogs my throat and makes me want to scream and punch walls. It hurts so much, I can’t breathe. Although you’re already gone, right? So, it’s not a thought, it’s a fact. You left and I’m alone.” Max lifts his hands in a surrendering and helpless gesture and huffs in pain at the spreading emptiness in his guts now that the truth is out. He feels like a dark blue wave crashed over him, swallowed him whole and dreads to drown him. He averts Daniel’s eyes with all the power that is still left in him, his chest heaves as if he’s just run five miles. 

“Are you done?”  
Daniel’s voice hovers in the air between them like a Damocles’ sword, cold and sharpened and deadly steel. Max blinks feverishly and silently nods, lowering his head and waiting for his death penalty to be performed.  
He can hear Daniel breathe in sharp little intakes of air, thinking, calculating and weighing.  
The silence now seems louder than the last one, tighter and heavier in its meaningfulness and experience. With every second Max feels closer to collapsing and crying his eyes out after having said so much and still not enough. Daniel hasn’t moved an inch from his spot on the sofa, one leg tucked under his thigh, fidgeting with the pompous cushion. 

“What do you want?”  
Max furrows his brow at that and licks his lips nervously causing Daniel to roll his eyes.  
“Come on, Max, you must have had a plan before coming here, right? Some kind of idea of what to say. So what do you want? Come on, it’s an easy question.”  
“It’s not an easy answer.” Max caves under the pressure of Daniel’s urging words. Max stands in the middle of the room, one hand pressed to his burning stomach and realizing that all his well sorted words lost him the second he passed the threshold of Daniel’s room (wrong, it was even earlier, when he first looked Daniel in the eyes).  
“I don’t know.” He says truthfully and averts his eyes yet again on the constant search for a hiding spot, where Daniel’s black and burning glare won’t find him.  
Max wipes his cheek and swallows. Knowing that he won’t survive another silence. He seeks out the first words that come his mind and utters them just to not have to listen to the deafening nothingness any longer. When he speaks his voice is mute and lifeless.  
“I’m still looking for you in the morning, you know? Not in my bed or the hotel room or anything. Not even at breakfast, although I always admired how awake you can be at seven a.m., but in the paddock. In the office. In the meetings. God, I miss yo-“  
“Don’t you _dare_!” Daniel snaps, gets up at once and points his finger at Max. The sudden movement startles Max to the amount that he stumbles backwards. Daniel’s almost pitch-black eyes tear Max apart with all the aversion and heated resentment and pain they radiate. “Don’t you dare and tell me, you miss me. Not you.”  
Silence covers them in its thick vail again, pressing down on Max’s chest until he feels like he’s being stripped of his ability to take a single intake of breath. He forces air down his throat and into his burning lungs. _Everything hurts_ , he thinks, _everything hurts so fucking much_. Suddenly he can’t look away any longer and drowns in the pitch blackness of Daniel’s eyes, sees so much and nothing to cling to when his own pain and regret overwhelm him.  
“I’m so, so sorry, Daniel. I should never have pushed you away. I should never have hurt you like that.”  
“Hurt me?” Daniel jeers on the brink of tears now again although he certainly shed enough tears because of Max. “Oh, Max, you didn’t hurt me. You dashed me with fuel and lit me on fire and watched me burn until there was nothing left. You didn’t hurt me, you broke me.”

Immeasurable hurt and pain beyond bearable cling to his words. Daniel looks like he’s going to punch him. He really does and all Max can think about is _do it, come on, do it, I deserve it_.  
And despite all odds and what Max certainly deserves there are no edges and razor blades in Daniel’s eyes, just tiredness and the understanding of them both as what they are. Hurt, regretful, lost.  
And despite all odds and what Max certainly deserves there is a warm hand touching his cheek ever so lightly. It feels like a crash at full speed, Max’s head spins, but he keeps his eyes locked with Daniel’s, not wanting to miss any emotion they are offering him now.  
“What do you want, Max?” Daniel asks again softly and in an exhale of breath that tingles Max’s eyelashes. He swallows against his knotted throat and lifts his eyes to meet Daniel’s.  
“I know, I fucked up. So bad. Over and over again. But I want you to know that I’d do anything to take back what happened. I wish I could travel back in time and change everything. Well, not everything. But everything that happened after Baku. I am so sorry.”  
Daniel strokes his cheek and there is a smile spreading across his cheeks that is solely and exclusively aimed at Max now and it gives him courage. He takes a shaky intake of breath and closes his eyes.  
“You’re everything I have and everything I ever wanted. You get me, Daniel. Not me as a driver, my reputation that is so much more deserved and accurate than I’d like to admit, the legacy I bear and hate with every fiber in my body. You get me. As a person, as the boy, that I can’t seem to release at times. And I threw it all away.” 

They stand in front of each other for a second, the silence less thick and crushing this time. Daniel lets out a quivering sigh and bestows Max with an utterly breathtaking and sad smile before raising his voice. 

“Isn’t it funny, how racing and caring contain the exact same letters and still manage to be complete opposites of one another?” Daniel wears an awe-inspiring cadence in his voice despite his hunched and faltering shoulder blades. Max’s head snaps up and he swallows drily. “And I still care for you. I can race against and care for you, Max, and I never thought I’d be capable of both simultaneously without being ripped apart by one or the other – the rivalry or the caring. Especially after what you did. I wish I could hate you. God, I wish I could turn at you and leave and never look back.” A humorless laugh escapes Daniel’s lips and it lights the spark in eyes.  
“But here I am and here we are, coming back to each other again.”  
_I’m sorry, fuck, I’m so sorry, Daniel_ , is what Max wants to say again and again, but not a sound escapes his chapped lips.  
“I can’t promise you anything. I would lie, if I did. I can’t forgive you, but I think about you a lot. You stirred something inside of me, Max, and I’m still not willing to let that one go. I could-“ Daniel clenches his jaw, letting his hand slip from Max’s cheek. “I could straight up sucker punch you for everything you said and did last year. But that wouldn’t get us very far, would it?”  
Max clears his throat with a curt nod and something that should have been a smile and ends up to be a grimace of uncertainty and nervousness.  
“So, what I’m asking you for is time, Max. You just waltzed in here and spilled out everything that you probably bottled up for an insane amount of time. I respect that, it takes courage. But I don’t know what to do about it, about you, right now.”  
Max nods again, this time with more effort if not more clarity.  
“Okay, I understand that.”  
Daniel takes a step back and looks a bit surprised by how close he came to Max during the last minutes.  
“Thanks.” 

 

It’s the first night Max falls asleep without being haunted by nightmares, blackness and Daniel falling away from him. He stares into the darkness of his hotel room, exhausted and weary to the bone, and listens to the beat of his still dark, but less black and heavy heart.  
 

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick notation at the end of this chapter.  
> I quoted Niki Lauda for the first time in my life in a very quick idea yesterday evening while editing the last bits of this thing although this story existed long before that (almost a month). Just now I read that Lauda passed away in the family circle yesterday evening.  
> I normally don’t comment on something like that, it’s terrible as it is and my words certainly won’t change anything, but Lauda was a legend and without him and his witty remarks and sharp intellect there will be a huge part of motorsport missing in the paddock. He was a man of few words, always strict and direct and sometimes harsh, but he was honest and cared for the sport like no other former driver. 
> 
> Danke, Niki, for everything.


End file.
